RUTHFULLY YOURS

Richard Ingrams 

Back in 2003, Richard Ingrams, one of Britain’s best known columnists and a co-founder of the satirical weekly Private Eye wrote in the Observer (sister newspaper on Sunday to the Guardian) the following gem about his attitude to Israel and the Jews:  

“I have developed a habit,” he said, “when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it.”

As I have said on many occasions (see previous entry for example), there is now no price to be paid in mainstream Britain for such attitudes. They are taken as normal. Now consider his latest piece of writing, this time in the Independent, as an example of what happens when such “normal” attitudes are allowed to fester.

Ingrams writes his column in the form of a diary which then goes on to address other subjects. Yesterday, he opened his piece by reflecting on Britain’s decision last week to expel an Israeli diplomat over the Dubai assassination of a Hamas terrorist. Here is what he said, with my italics to highlight the tone he adopts:

“The expulsion of a Mossad man from London following the affair over the forged passports used by a gang of Israeli assassins in Dubai is welcome, if only to remind us that regardless of this single expulsion Mossad operates openly out of London with the full approval of the British Government.

“This is surprising considering the kind of things that Mossad gets up to – forging passports, assassinating the political opponents of the Israeli government, kidnapping those like the nuclear technician Mordecai Vanunu (who spent 12 years in solitary confinement for daring to tell the world about his country’s nuclear weapons) – behaving in other words like state–licensed gangsters. Surprising, too, is the way politicians are happy to describe themselves, even when engaged in expulsions, as friends of Israel. The Prime Minister himself comes into this category, as his friend Sir Martin Gilbert [NB: Martin Gilbert is a well-known British Jew] recently reminded us.

“What this amounts to is that these people are proud to be friends of a country that operates a system of apartheid in territory which it has illegally occupied and colonised, that subjects the people who live in that territory to intolerable restrictions, that thinks nothing of killing large numbers of them, including women and children, to punish them for daring to launch rockets and that continually lies about its actions as it does about the criminal activities of Mossad.

“If in the days of apartheid you had proclaimed yourself a friend of South Africa you would have been regarded as some kind of right-wing racist. Yet no special odium nowadays attaches to those friends of Israel from Gordon Brown downwards. It is all rather puzzling.”

This is the writing of a fanatic. It is also symptomatic of the group hysteria over Israel which has now sunk its claws into mainstream British society. No other country is talked about and written about in such terms.

Apart from the substance, also notice the style. The sheer intensity of the feelings that motivate the writer is stark. Those feelings can be summed up in a single word: hatred.

And so deep seated is that hatred that it extends beyond Israel to anyone who dares to stand up for that country. For Ingrams, those who call for a reasoned and balanced approach to Israel deserve a “special odium”. We are to be ostracised and vilified, to be treated with disdain and contempt.

This is a sickness, and it goes very deep. But let me just leave you today with an image of Richard Ingrams from the biography on his wikipedia entry. I think it illustrates the nature of the problem in Great Britain rather nicely:

“Ingrams plays the organ in his local Anglican church in Aldworth, Berkshire each Sunday. The Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust was formed under the patronage of Ingrams and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie.”